Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Summer in the City

Thursday evening and you are cycling back home. The air is warm and inviting, and people fill the streets. The Easter holiday is starting tomorrow, and you can sense good will, and relief. A very different feeling from the random harshness of weekend desperation to have a good time at all costs. Winter has bowed one last time and disappeared. You find yourself smiling.

The last couple of weeks have not been easy. Among other reasons for anxiety, your house is now under threat. There is no reason for immediate concern, this is only a prelude to a saga that might unfold in the next weeks and months. But the feeling is unsettling. Every knock on the door stratles you. Answer it, or pretend you are not there? There is nothing worse than hiding. You cringe like a snail in its shell. The precariousness of your position - a squatter - which laid dormant for many months, now comes back to haunt you.

When you board that train of thoughts, it will race through your mind all night. Constantly considering possibilities, and strategies, only to come back again and again to the same point: you have almost no control over the situation. A thought hard to reconcile yourself with. Squatting keeps you on your toes, said S long ago, but you've been standing on your toes enough to apply for the Royal Ballet.

It takes you some days to distance yourself from the anxiety. You remind yourself that these are probably your final months of squatting; that you had been evicted in the past. Uncertainty is hard to accept. But the ability to live with uncertainty is the source of much strength.